MacCloskey’s reply to Sosnowski’s column supporting “Turnaround Agenda”

By Kim MacCloskey Posted May 26, 2015 at 5:43 PM
Updated May 26, 2015 at 5:46 PM

Rockford Republican Joe Sosnowski recently wrote a guest column praising the Rockford City Council for voting to support Gov. Bruce Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda.” What do you expect? Republicans have been out to destroy unions and eliminate worker and consumer rights for years. They don’t care that this is destroying the middle class. They ought to call this the “Billionaire Welfare Agenda,” because the obvious goal is to make billionaires like Rauner richer while stripping more and more benefits from workers and consumers.

Here’s what this “agenda” proposes:

1. Cut workers' compensation benefits so profits will be increased. But Corporate America has been incredibly profitable for the last 30 years or so, and corporations are literally sitting on trillions of dollars in cash that they won’t invest to actually be the “job creators” they claim to be.

2. Raise the minimum wage to $10 per

hour by 2022. That’s right, it’ll take seven years for the minimum wage to get to $10 per hour. Had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation and productivity, it would be $22 per hour NOW.

3. “Reform” the unemployment insurance system. It actually mentions reducing pressures on the “job creators.” The real job creators are consumers, who buy the products corporations sell. Corporations are not job creators. They only want to increase profits the easy way, by cutting worker benefits. When corporations get richer, they don’t create jobs. If they did, we would have had millions of jobs available in the 2000s. The “job creator” mantra is a lie, just like “trickle down” economics. Its goal is to get gullible people to support the Republicans against their own best interests.

4. “Lawsuit reform,” which would make it harder to sue corporations that engage in wrongful conduct or sell known dangerous products. They still spout their “free market” propaganda that the market will fix any problems. How many people will be killed before the market forces a corporation to stop selling a dangerous product? With corporate-owned media and an unlimited advertising budget, I suggest that won’t happen unless the corporation kills and maims an awful lot of people. And if they did, what happens to a corporation that does that? They get a fine. No one is jailed, no one is prosecuted.

Our once great country is being taken over by billionaires like Rauner, who just aren’t rich enough. They are being assisted by Republicans like Sosnowski, who apparently think that if they stand next to a billionaire long enough they might get some of that money.

• - We had it right under Republican President Eisenhower, who raised taxes at the top (the equivalent of raising taxes today on income above a million dollars per year) to pay our bills and build our interstate highway system, which created millions of jobs and, in turn, created a middle class of well-paid workers. Republicans today don’t want a middle class. They demonize unions and other groups who tend to vote for Democrats to increase their own power and wealth. Their policies have created the new billionaire class and destroyed the middle class.

  And they still aren’t rich enough. If Rauner and Sosnowski want to help Illinois’ citizens, they should pass a graduated income tax and raise Rauner’s and his cronies’ income taxes. After all, we’ve been blackmailed into giving corporations like Caterpillar more welfare, and they move their factories to Mexico anyway.

  FDR said that when corporations become more powerful than our government, that is Fascism. That’s what Rauner and our state Republicans want, a Fascist society with them in charge. Is that what you want?

  Kim MacCloskey, an attorney, is a Duran resident.

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